Ivo Josipovic

Ivo Josipovic (28 August 1957-) was President of Croatia from 19 February 2010 to 18 February 2015, succeeding Stjepan Mesic and preceding Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic.

Biography
Ivo Josipovic was born in Zagreb, SR Croatia, SFR Yugoslavia in 1957, and he worked as a criminal procedure law professor and as a composer before entering politics with the League of Communists of Yugoslavia. Josipovic played a key role in the democratic transformation of the League of Communists of Croatia into the Social Democratic Party of Croatia as the author of its first statute. He left politics in 1994, but returned in 2003, winning a seat in the Croatian Parliament as an independent. He returned to the SDP in 2007, and he was elected President of Croatia in 2010. He sought to address deep social injustice, corruption, and organized crime, and his platform included protection of individual rights and promotion of fundamental values such as equality, human rights, gay rights, justice, diligence, social empathy, and creativity. In 2015, he narrowly lost re-election to HDZ candidate Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic.